Batu Kawan

Batu Kawan is an island and newly developing suburb of Seberang Perai, the mainland part of the Malaysian state of Penang. Rivers, the Jawi to the north and the Tengah to the south, cut it off from the rest of the mainland. For most of its history it was an agricultural area of sugar, coconut and rubber estates, with Chinese settlers running sugar plantations there as early as 1796 and granite quarried and shipped across the Penang Strait to George Town. The estates were cleared in the 1960s for larger oil palm plantations, and from 1990 the Penang Development Corporation took over about 6,000 hectares for planned growth. The opening of the Second Penang Bridge in 2014, linking the town to Batu Maung on Penang Island, set off rapid development: the Batu Kawan Industrial Park hosts plants of several multinational firms, and the town holds Design Village, Malaysia's largest outlet mall, and the Bandar Cassia township. In 2020 the surrounding mukim had a population of 11,409.